USAID Sector Reform and Utility Commercialization (SRUC) Task Order Papua New Guinea Power Limited (PPL) Support on Data Management, Metering, and Customer Engagement – Component 4: Large Customer Engagement Strategy (LCES)

The training aimed to enhance PPL's customer engagement capabilities, particularly for large commercial and industrial (C&I) customers. PPL currently utilizes a broad segmentation approach, categorizing large C&I customers into three groups based on their electricity consumption. However, this approach results in over 7800 customers being classified as "large C&I," making it challenging for the Customer Engagement Team (CET) to develop meaningful relationships and engage effectively with these customers. To address this issue, PPL is recommended to segment the large group into smaller categories, prioritizing its most critical customers and allocating the CET's time and resources accordingly. The recommended segmentation approach involves ranking large C&I customers based on their annual or monthly power consumption, which is closely tied to their annual revenue generated. By analyzing large customer billing data, the group of 7800+ large C&I customers can be segmented into four sub-categories: Platinum, Gold, Silver, and Bronze accounts. This approach enables PPL to devote its CE efforts to each group in proportion to their importance to the company's continued business. During the training, participants engaged in a large customer segmentation exercise, which aimed to begin thinking about the various characteristics of PPL's large C&I customers, how they can be grouped based on common characteristics, and how the unique characteristics of these groups impact their customer service needs. The exercise involved categorizing the top 164 large C&I customers on the POM grid into 5-10 groups based on electricity end-use and ranking each group by consumption. The exercise revealed various end-use groups, including government, hospitals, manufacturing, real estate, NGOs, extractive industries, banks, state-owned enterprises, new construction, telecommunications, hotels and restaurants, high commissions, retail, and transport. These groups have unique characteristics and customer service needs, requiring specialized attention from the CET. By assigning each end-use group to a CET Account Executive, PPL can enable the Executive to specialize in serving the unique needs of each group, enhancing customer engagement and satisfaction.